Featuring the original Jimi Hendrix Experience lineup, the album has a cover of Cream's Sunshine of Your Love and a pre-Woodstock version of the Star-Spangled Banner
(Image credit: Ron Howard/Redferns)
A new Jimi Hendrix Experience live album, Los Angeles Forum: April 26, 1969, will be released this fall, it was announced today.
Recorded, as you might expect, at the Los Angeles Forum on April 26, 1969, the album features the original Experience lineup of Hendrix on electric guitar and vocals, Noel Redding on bass guitar and Mitch Mitchell on drums, and will be released on November 18 via Legacy Recordings.
You can check out a preview of the album – a loose but exhilarating take on the Are You Experienced classic I Don't Live Today – below.
Produced by Janie Hendrix, John McDermott – manager of Hendrix's music catalog – and longtime Hendrix producer/engineer/collaborator Eddie Kramer, Los Angeles Forum: April 26, 1969 features a number of classics (Foxey Lady, Purple Haze and Voodoo Child (Slight Return), among them) and some more obscure tunes, such as a cover of Tax Free, a 1967 instrumental by the Swedish duo Hansson & Karlsson.
Also of note on the LP is a cover of Cream's Sunshine of Your Love, and a pre-Woodstock version of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Throughout the evening, the band struggled to keep over-zealous fans from rushing the stage, leading to increased police activity that frustrated Hendrix. "'Scuse me while I kiss that policeman," he ad-libbed during Purple Haze, while dedicating Spanish Castle Magic to “the plain clothes police out there and other goofballs.”
Los Angeles Forum: April 26, 1969 will be available on 2LP vinyl, CD and all digital platforms. It features liner notes by noted music critic Randy Lewis, with a preface by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, who attended the Forum show in person. You can take a look at its cover art and track list below.
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Jackson is an Associate Editor at GuitarWorld.com. He’s been writing and editing stories about new gear, technique and guitar-driven music both old and new since 2014, and has also written extensively on the same topics for Guitar Player. Elsewhere, his album reviews and essays have appeared in Louder and Unrecorded. Though open to music of all kinds, his greatest love has always been indie, and everything that falls under its massive umbrella. To that end, you can find him on Twitter crowing about whatever great new guitar band you need to drop everything to hear right now.
